Top congressional Democrats have agreed on what they will demand of GOP leaders in return for voting to extend government funding this month: Any shutdown-averting deal needs to include health care provisions such as an extension of soon-to-expire insurance subsidies, one top lawmaker said.
Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts, the House’s top Democratic tax writer, described that ultimatum following a private huddle with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and other party leaders.
“They’re on board” with the strategy, Neal said in an interview about Senate Democrats, including Schumer.
A Schumer spokesperson declined to address Neal’s specific claim. The Senate minority leader himself said Thursday after the meeting that Republicans need to come to the table for a “bipartisan negotiation” on health care or Democrats will not support a government funding bill.
“If they try to jam something down our throats without any compromise — without any bipartisan, real, bipartisan discussion — they ain’t going to get the votes, plain and simple,” Schumer said.
Neal argued that Congress can’t wait much longer to avert the expiration of enhanced tax subsidies that help about 20 million of Americans afford health care plans offered on exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act. People who receive that assistance are already being notified that the tax subsidies will end later this year, he said, with open enrollment for health insurance beginning in November.
“So you can have this huge spike in health care costs coupled with the subtraction of health care for millions of Americans,” Neal said, referring to Medicaid cuts in the GOP domestic policy bill passed in July. “And we have broad agreement that the health of the American people should be paramount in this debate.”
Both Schumer and Jeffries have already moved to make health care — notably the enhanced insurance subsidies created by the 2021 American Rescue Plan — their key demand. But there have been internal disputes over whether to make it an immediate ultimatum ahead of the Sept. 30 expiration of government funding or kick a showdown later into the year to allow for additional spending negotiations.
While there are some Republicans who support extending the subsidies, top Republican leaders in both chambers have ruled out including any such extension on the immediate stopgap expected to get taken up this month to avoid a shutdown next month.
They are dealing with hardening opposition among fiscal conservatives to continuing the enhanced subsidies. Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), chair of the House Freedom Caucus, told reporters Thursday that his group has met and decided “we oppose these free giveaways to insurance companies.” He accused Democrats of wanting to bankroll “multibillion-dollar” health care corporations.
Hill Democrats, meanwhile, have taken pains to stay on the same page on government funding after House Democrats almost universally opposed a GOP-backed funding bill last March that some Democratic senators ultimately voted to advance.
As top leaders move into a more confrontational posture, appropriators are seeking to continue bipartisan negotiations on fiscal 2026 funding. The House agreed Wednesday night to kick off formal talks between Republicans and Democrats on a narrow funding package.
That conference committee will attempt to strike a deal on a full year of updated funding levels for three of the 12 bills Congress has to clear each year to keep federal cash flowing. The departments of Agriculture and Veterans Affairs would be funded in that three-bill batch, along with the FDA, congressional operations and military construction projects.
But Democrats are warning that Republicans will need to give considerable ground in those negotiations.
“House Republicans are coming to the table with funding bills that are filled with extreme, reckless cuts and harmful riders that have been rejected on a bipartisan basis,” Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democratic appropriator, said on the House floor.
Meredith Lee Hill, Mia McCarthy and Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.